Closer wor(l)ds – a blog for linguists

13 December 2013

Childhood playground games – a multilingual comparison of etymology

Ah, childhood games! I bet all of you look back at those (more or less distant) times with pleasure and maybe a bit of nostalgia. Those […]
31 October 2013

The potential magnitude of translation errors

In 2004, four people died of massive radiation overdose in a hospital in France. The problem was not one of wrong diagnosis or equipment malfunction: it […]
24 October 2013

Famous cross-cultural blunders in translation

Translation is an art form as much as it is a science. That being the case, it is subject to the quirks of both: from an […]
30 September 2013

The history of translation

The Story of Language Language is one of the most powerful mediums of communication known to man. Before the advent of the spoken word, humans had […]
30 August 2013

Challenges in translating poetry

Some while ago I wrote a post on the challenges in translating films and I thought it would be interesting to turn this into a series, […]
19 July 2013

Do we always need ‘translation’?

The answer to the question largely depends on who you are. One may need the services of a professional translator for an official document – which […]
10 July 2013

On translation tests and why we don’t believe in them

If you need to build your house, are you going to ask the builder to build you a free garage first? Shouldn’t you better look at […]
19 June 2013

Challenges in film translation

Film translation can be a tough and onerous job. If it’s done well, it can help garner the acclaim of film technicians and critics the world […]
18 August 2011

Scammers – love ’em or hate ’em?

I know that the question in the title may seem a rhetorical question, but someone with enough common sense as not to fall into their traps, […]